Institutional ethnography as a feminist approach for social work research

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to introduce Institutional Ethnography (IE) as a valuable feminist approach for social work research. It first describes how IE found its way through the women’s studies to the academic arenas in Finland, and how it has influenced author’s own research. The second part focusses on social work research, where IE has been used to investigate how the welfare service system transforms the experiences and everyday world of its service users into generalised categorisations and definitions. However, in its focus on institutions and social relations of ruling instead of individuals, IE allows seeing the professionals embedded in the same institutional relations and practices as the service users. IE also shares the critical and emancipatory aims of feminist social work practice and research. Thus, the author argues that IE should be better known and used in social work research in the Nordic countries.